Episode 58

Ezra McCarthy

Hey guys, great to have you on the podcast today. This one’s going to be just a little bit different. John Pajak from the profits with Payjack podcast actually interviewed me. And so we’ve decided to release it here as well. So you could hear our conversation and really enjoyed talking to John and hope you do as well.

John Pajak

Welcome to Profits with Pajak, the podcast where we talk about business strategies and financial insights for the green industry. And today I have Ezra McCarthy sitting in the hot seat. Ezra is no stranger to us. He’s a friend of the show besides being an amazing human being. He is also the owner of Green Frog Web Design, which is an awesome marketing and I would say web design. Maybe I’m oversimplifying it a bit, but the work that Ezra does is very helpful to those that are in the green industry. So let’s have a nice warm welcome for Ezra McCarthy. Ezra, how are you doing today?

Ezra McCarthy

Doing great, John. I’m excited to be back on the podcast and hopefully answer some questions maybe your listeners have stuck there in the back of their mind that keep needling them.

John Pajak

Yeah, yeah. You’ve been on the show a few times. We always end up talking about the importance of not only having a good website, but marketing. And really, if I had to start all over again and I had the choice between having a wad of cash to spend on equipment or using that same wad of cash on marketing, if I wanted to grow very quickly, I’d be spending it on marketing.

And I know a lot of guys, they tend to focus on the sexy things. That’s the shiny, fun stuff, like equipment. That’s what they tend to spend their money on. But what really brings the money in and is your best ROI is marketing, in my opinion. So just kind of talking about that a bit. Ezra, what do you see from your end and your perspective? What are some of the things that work with marketing in the green industry?

Ezra McCarthy

I just had Jonathan Pototschnik on Lawn Care Blueprint, our podcast, and he said something that really astounded me. I think most people are familiar with him. He’s got service autopilot, but he also has, and some people may not even realize, CitiTurf, a multimillion dollar company outside of Dallas that serves residential customers. He was saying when he started, he was taking hardly any money out of the business and spending 25% of his gross on marketing. Now, I’m not recommending that for people, so don’t take me wrong.

I would do that kind of just broke my frame there for a second. I’m just like that and now he doesn’t spend that now and he’s just getting back in. He stepped out of the business as far as the day to day and now he’s getting back in a little bit. But what I see is people that are succeeding consistently and a lot of times people think of marketing as just for customers. But I was recently talking to a recruiter and they helped service based businesses find people. And what he was describing on how to get team members was literally just marketing for people. Probably one of the two complaints or one of the main ones I always hear is, maybe I can even get work. Maybe they’re out of that early stage, just kind of a hustle stage. And now they’re just like, wow, we’re quality people. And I think a lot of times as business owners, we get that we have to consistently market for customers, but we may not have our mindset that we need to be consistently marketing for quality team members as well.

John Pajak

That is very true, especially when you are looking at it. We do need to market to customers. We need that new blood, that lifeblood of new clients, the cashflow that comes from them is one thing, a very important element. But having technicians, having people in your pipeline to work with you is equally as important, especially once you get to a certain scale. You get to a certain size because it’s almost impossible to grow if you cannot serve your clients. And I love the fact that you bring up, you correlate marketing, not only to new customers, but also to getting, getting those new technicians in line. 

I’m glad that she’s talked with Jonathan Pototschnik. He’s a friend of ours too. And yeah, he sold Service Autopilot a little while ago. That’s why he’s back with CitiTurf and he’s tearing it up now, especially with the five for 50 series on YouTube. Just a little friendly nod to our friends. If you haven’t happened to catch that, it’s a really great series on YouTube right now where Jonathan dives deep.

Ezra McCarthy

He also puts it out on podcast too. So either place.

John Pajak

Yeah, I forgot about that. It’s not just primarily on YouTube. He does have it anywhere you can hear me. Basically, I think you could hear Jonathan too. You also have your podcast as well.

Ezra McCarthy

The Lawn Care Blueprint. Yeah, I’ve been enjoying interviewing people there. And our target audience is really people that are looking to grow because there’s a lot of people that talk about what kind of equipment to buy and what happens if there’s a rainy day. That’s all the real stuff that we have to worry about. It really goes back to, guess, the state of the marketing. Our industry is so fragmented. I’ve seen different numbers, upwards of 100 and some hundred thousand just in the US alone.

In all reality, that might be low. Because what does it take to start a small lawn and landscape business? Not much. Most people have a mower and if they have a little bit of drive, they can get out there. But people that are listening to this and people that listen to Lawn Care Blueprint, we’re not necessarily trying to help someone who just wants a little side gig that makes them some coffee money, but people who are actually trying to build business. If we’re going to build that as business owners, there’s so much we have to account for real equipment.

It’s expensive. You want to get a great mower, you want to get a great rig, you want to get a great truck. Man, I’m looking at trucks. We’re fixing to get a different one myself. And you want to get a nice, decent truck. You’re looking at, at a minimum, like 40 grand. Unless you want entry level, you can get less, but I hate mechanics. So you’ll have to bear with me. It’s expensive. Everything’s expensive.

If we’re going to keep up with that, we have to make a real business, not just mowing 15 lawns on the weekend. And if that’s where you are, that’s okay. But if you’re trying to build a real business, it’s going to take some intentionality and some thought.

John Pajak

Right. You know, and it bounced back really quick about the pricing on vehicles. I just read an article just recently about how the big three, literally, they cannot. A $40,000 truck is not going to exist. It’s like, that’s the base price. You could go buy a used vehicle and still come underneath that. But as far as new trucks come, if you are looking to, oh, I’m just going to buy a base model like F-150, I want to buy an F-150 with the XL package, which is bottom of the line.

Frank windows, a lot of manual stuff in it or as manual as they’ll make it now these days. Those are going to be about 40 grand. 40 grand is the basement. That’s a bargain basement price now. It’s kind of sickening to see how expensive these vehicles have gotten. Unfortunately, we kind of rely on that type of thing. So yeah, you’re right. If you are looking to be any sort of business, not the weekend warrior that does things and it’s like, I got 10, 15 accounts. That’s my life right now. It’s like, hey, good. I’m glad that you’re doing the side hustle. But when it comes down to it, you have to have a plan if you’re going to grow it at all, or even if you’re just going to stay solo. 

It gets up on you very quickly. I was just at my dealership yesterday. I brought a piece of equipment in to get repaired. While I was there, I was looking at the showroom floor like all the new mowers and everything. And it’s been a couple of years because we don’t mow anymore. We just do fertilization and weed control. I was shocked. Some specialty equipment, I was like, wow, that’s pretty expensive. Like a stand-on blower, one of those right on blower things. It was like 20 grand. And the regular mowers that I.

Ezra McCarthy

A lot of leaves right there.

John Pajak

Yeah, there’s a lot of leaves that you got to be cleaning up. But also just the regular zero turns and the stand-on units that I’m used to seeing, they were thousands of dollars more than what I remember them. And I’m like, wow, these machines are not drastically better by any means. They’re just more expensive.

Just kind of throw that out there. It’s like the trucks and the equipment are way more expensive. You got to have a plan. You can’t just say, my plan is buying the equipment. It’s like, no, how am I going to get my ROI out of these things? For me, the answer is we have to make sure we have enough volume of clients, not only just being price-stripe, but having the volume of clients that we need. And how do we do that? We have to get new people in. Marketing is part of that.

Ezra McCarthy

I think this is a little philosophical, but I heard something recently that I really disagree with and I’d like to get your take on it. This individual, I remember, I think I’ve heard a couple of places, they were basically commenting that the American dream is dead. Now, currently I live in Canada, but I’m still American. And I actually strongly disagree with that. If you’re not planning ahead, if you’re not preparing, if you’re just kind of going out and bumping along, yeah, it’s probably dead for you. But from what I see, like even talking to my mom’s a little older, my stepdad’s a little older and talking to them, it’s such a different world and there’s so many opportunities in our day.  Now, this is the only day I’ve known, but I almost feel like it’s easier now to start a business. 

Yes, we just talked about, and that’s real, the increase in prices, but I almost feel like the customer, because the price increases and all that are there, they feel it. They’re almost somewhat desensitized a little bit to the price. It’s almost like the price is kind of just gone. And so I feel like there is a lot of opportunity if we do it right to build a real business to serve people. And I feel like today is really one of the best times ever, the past five years at least.

And even today, if we put the work in, build something, I feel like there still is a lot of opportunity.

John Pajak

I agree with you 100% man. The American dream is not dead. You’re right, there’s more opportunity now. Anybody listening to this podcast right now, or they listen to yours, any podcast out there, our goal isn’t… my goal, I should say. I know you’re very similar to me. We’re here to educate and to help others be better. We didn’t have that even 20 years ago. This is something that is very common now, like back when I first started my very first business, there were no podcasts about how to do things better. There were no YouTube videos. YouTube didn’t exist. 

The community that we have in the screen industry, which a lot of people still don’t quite grasp, if you think about it, all the social media, that is just part of the community. The heart and soul of the community is when we all get together and we come to big events like Equip Expo and things like that, and you get to talk to one another. That’s part of the community. People share and they’re moving information. This is something we never had before. So I’ve heard people talk about that same thing too. The American dream is dead because the prices are so high or you have to work hard to get your stuff. It’s like, no, no, no, the American dream is still alive. You just have to have the strength and the grit to chase after it and actually make it happen. It’s not an easy thing. When you’re chasing your dreams, it’s not always like, oh, I just woke up one day and I’m going to pursue this and it’s going to be super easy.

Honestly, it kind of is in this day and age because you could go ahead and you could take YouTube University to help you get a jumpstart on how to do something, how to start a lawn care business. You could get a decade’s worth of jumpstarts and actually be successful.

Ezra McCarthy

I can remember back in 2020 and I was trying to figure out how to hire my first employee. Man, I had no idea what I was doing. It was awful. I did the whole try to hire off Craigslist thing. I don’t think I need to tell you how that went. I just had no idea. And there’s just so much information now. And I’ll think about one example. I met this guy, he was 16 at that point. This is a true story where I was living in Texas.

16 has a small lawn care company. That year, I think he was working with a friend of the family. They did like $30,000. I just interviewed him a month or two ago and they were on projected to do. He had bought out his other friend’s family. Now he’s 18. He’s going to college. Their business is doing 500K in gross revenue. I don’t have the specifics on their net, but they are profitable. And I just thought what kind of place, and he’s a second generation, so he’s Hispanic. His parents came here from Mexico, I believe Mexico. And I thought, what other place in the world getting a 16 year old while he’s in high school makes a decent sized business and a first generation. That’s amazing. And you want to talk about the American dream, that’s the American dream right there. The possibilities that in our day, you could go on. 

Now there’s all these podcasts. I can talk about Jonathan Pototschnik, we just interviewed him. He’s got lots of great information out there. People who have real businesses. And that’s what really got me started down this rabbit hole of podcasting and reading books. I love reading. Trying to hire that first employee. Figure out, what am I doing? When am I supposed to hire? How much work am I supposed to have before I hire him? And then what to do next and marketing. And I remember I found this guy, he was talking about double your business. That started me down this rabbit hole. And now probably literally hundreds of books later over the past couple of years. And, I don’t want to know how many podcasts I’ve listened to, but that’s a lot.

John Pajak

Yeah, it’s again, like you said, there’s so much more information out there nowadays that when you look at it, it is relatively simple. It’s not like it’s rocket science for us. If you could follow somebody’s blueprint, you will be successful in this business. It’s just the way it is. And what I love about it is that it feels like to me that the green industry is always a very good start to expand into other things. And most people I talk to, they don’t ever really see that. And I’m like, listen, trust me, there’s trailblazers out there.

They came before us or like when I was coming up, they were also, they were wearing the same hats and the same boots I was wearing, but then they made changes and pivots and they turned, say, mowing lawns into something else. A lot of people I know, they stayed in the green industry, pivoted into some other, some of the more niche services and others too, they have completely exited the green industry, but because of all the things that they learned as a business owner in the green industry, they have now, businesses that are outside of this, still a service-based company, but you kind of use that as a launching point or another successful business. 

To your point, I think a lot of the lessons and trials and tribulations that we learn through owning a lawn care business, it’s kind of universal in a sense, because we go to hire somebody. Every single business on the face of this planet needs to hire people at some point in time. Unless you’re going to be solo forever or just the one man. You’re going to be like Rambo and trying to take on the world one man against the world, which is unrealistic. It’s just kind of crazy how a lot of these things, a lot of these lessons that we learn are transferable to other industries. Hiring somebody, that is a skill and you could hone it. At any point in time, there’s no manual that says, hey, you got to hire somebody at this point.

I don’t know about you, but being as experienced as I am, I’m saying hire somebody as quick as you possibly can. Don’t stretch it out for many, many years, because otherwise you’re going to be stuck wearing the same hats for a really long time, probably longer than you need to.

Ezra McCarthy

Let me tell you a quick story that I think relates here. We just went, and we hired a fishing guide where we live. There’s this monstrous lake, they dammed up a river. And so this lake is at some point it’s four or 500 feet deep, like a hundred miles long, cause this was a river and then like 200 miles the other way. Not all, what’s kind of narrower, but that’s the length of it. So we hired this guide, we went out, we went two and a half hours one way in his boat. And then he had this, it’s called a downrigger. I had never used it before. 

You’ve done it? Okay. So he had these downriggers.

We got, we were rented by the edge of the shore, 90 feet, and we dropped it 20 feet off the bottom. Within minutes of putting down that line, like bam, bam, we were getting lake trout, trophy lake trout. I’m talking. And this is, these aren’t fish stories. I can show you pictures, They’re literally, I don’t know the poundage because they’re huge, but they’re, I feel like they should weigh more within minutes. Just bam, bam, bam. And I’m telling you, we were getting them so much that it was almost like, okay, this is boring catching these monsters. He knew exactly where to go at what depth and how to get them. And it was crazy. We were out there with my family. And then when we were going in, we were talking to a couple of people that were in boats fishing and we, and the guy had asked him, Hey, his name was Tom. Tom asked him, I was fishing today. They’re like, Oh man, we fished all day and we didn’t catch anything. 

Well, remember this lake is monstrous. It struck me. was like, okay, here we are. These two other people went out all day and didn’t catch anything because they didn’t know where to go and how. And in business it is such a Cheat sheet. When I was going to hire for my business, I went and I found someone who was hiring similar employees to what I needed in the same place. And I paid him $500 for an hour. Now you may say, Ezra, you’re ridiculous. That’s stupid. Well, it wasn’t. He showed me how to interview them, the questions to ask and the process. There’s no telling how much he saved me with that one hour. It was well worth it. 

And so in our business, lawn and landscape business, we could look around and say, wait, we’re probably not going to be able to get something right in our community because then there’s going to be a competition. But if we look around and say, who is where I want to go? And then how can I get them to help me to miss the pitfalls that are right in front of me to kind of be my guide? Because I told my wife, if we would have got a boat, rented a boat and went out there and said, okay, we’re going to fish around the lake, we probably would have been just like those other people. We wouldn’t have known where to go, what depth to put the hook, the lure, I’d never even been down rigging fishing before. I don’t even think I’ve ever seen someone do it, but he showed us how, he showed us where, and we were just amazed by it.

John Pajak

Right, and again, like you said, it correlates to, hey, you want to catch the fish? You want to get new people in your business? It’s not rocket science. You could hire somebody that will help shortcut things. And I’ve done that myself where on paper, in theory, it seems easy. It’s like, hey, just like fishing, you throw your bait on your hook and you throw it in the water and then you catch a fish, right? But there’s a lot more to it. It gets very deep. Down rigging, when you fish with downriggers, my dad and I, my brothers, we’ve done those Lake Michigan and Lake Erie. 

Ezra McCarthy

Do you go deep sea fishing? 

John Pajak

Not deep sea fishing, but just for Lake Michigan. We’ve done it at different times of the season. So it’s like their Coho or steelheads, lake trout, all these different fish. But yeah, you have to know where you’re fishing. The location is key. It’s critical. A lot of these things you hire that captain and people are like, well, yeah, you could just rent a boat. you could just, you don’t need to have marketing in your business to get new people. It’s like, yeah, maybe there’s so, so many levels to marketing as a whole. 

We were talking about advertising and incentives and bringing value to the people. I look at it, maybe you see it too. We see the quality of the marketing that is being put out there, like a website. I’m sure you see people have been in business for a long time and you see their website and you’re just like, ⁓ like how are they getting people? I’m sure this isn’t converting very well and the thing is, it’s like when you have somebody that knows what they’re doing and holds your hand, it’s just like that captain on the boat where you’ll get the right bait, the right line, all the right things. And it makes it so much easier, even though it might cost you a little bit more. It’s a much more enjoyable experience because unlike the other boat where there’s, yeah, we’ve been out here for like 12 hours and we haven’t caught anything. You went out there for a four hour little tour, a four hour charter, and you got a whole cooler full of, full of huge fish.

Like you put that into perspective with business. You could be out there spending money and saying marketing doesn’t work, cursing it, and then the people that are smart maybe go out there and learn, maybe take an hour, learn how to hire the right people, right? Man, you’re crazy. You’re spending $500 for an hour, but now you know what to do, what to ask, how to do that. And now, it’s again, you could teach a man to fish. If a man is hungry and you give him a fish, you feed him for one night. If you teach a man to fish, you fed him for the rest of his life. I’m paraphrasing that.

Ezra McCarthy

It’s so true. I remember in college, I roofed, been on hundreds of roofs. I remember we were driving by this house. The homeowner obviously had decided he was going to save some money and roof his own house, which is a roofing complex. He doesn’t have to know. This guy, we drive by it one week, we drive by it the next, and it was a little bit better. It was half done, not even half done. A little bit was done. We drove by it later, days, a couple of weeks later, still wasn’t done. I was thinking to myself, this is insane. At that point, hire someone.

I think the DIY mindset, and I feel like I talk about it a lot, but we get caught up in this, like, I can do that. And most of us, if we’re in this business, lawn and landscaping, we probably didn’t grow up in a wealthy home. We just probably didn’t. And that’s not an insult, I didn’t either. No, we probably did everything ourselves. You don’t pay someone to do it, you’re just going to figure it out. In our business, I feel like we can get caught up in that so much where we’re just like, okay. I can figure that out. Why would I pay someone? can figure that out. Not realizing that we’re like that person renting a boat, we’re going to waste so much time and then still probably not get the same results.

John Pajak

Exactly. I think that’s why a lot of guys are, they get burnt out because they keep spinning their wheels and they’re not going anywhere. Some guys are happy with that. They’re just like, well, I have what I can handle and I’m fine. But for those that want to grow, because I talked to a lot of business owners that really have ambitious goals. They really want to get to that next level, but they don’t know how because they’re out there fishing, but they’re fishing with the wrong bait. They don’t even have a hook. 

They just literally have, just to give you a visualization, just imagine you wrap the bait up and tie it to the line, but there’s no hook on it. And they throw it out there and it’s like, dude, you’re like, you’re getting people to kind of come here, but you’re not, you’re like chumming the water. You’re not actually, you don’t even have the tools out there to actually hook people and bring them into your circle. Whether it’s an employee or a customer that’s going to bring new cashflow into our business, bring some new blood into the business. 

So it’s again, I think it’s really important, especially, I really feel for some reason in our industry marketing is really, really overlooked. It’s not utilized like it should be. You and I have worked together in the past and it’s like, hey, we’re going to throw, I look at Ezra and I’m like, this guy, I’m going to have him as my guide for some of the tools, the things that you help people with, like with their marketing and their website and their SEO work. And it’s like, oh, I can do that myself. Yeah, I could, but do I have all the time? I go to you and all of sudden, instead of wrapping my bait, tying it to the line and there’s no hook. Man, I’m looking at you and you got this like really nice Rapala lure. It’s got two treble hooks on it. It’s got the right colors and the right flash for the type of water and the type of weather that we’re in. And it dives to a certain level and says you’re using the downer. That is the ultimate bait and you know it.

And it’s like, bam, we’re using that today because that’s what’s working. We know what everybody’s biting on and you go ahead and you throw that out there and boom, real quick in that campaign, we’re nailing them. We’re just getting leads left and right and we’re converting people.

Ezra McCarthy

And sometimes people get caught up in buzzwords. I had one customer, they had one of these people call them and they’re like, oh, you got to get your website optimized for AI. Oh man. And I do think that’s where it’s going. Don’t get me wrong. I use it every day a lot. And I think in five, 10 years, it’s going to be way more there. But right now, especially for service businesses, I don’t think it’s there. And let me give you a hint for each one listening in today. When they tell you, let’s optimize for AI, you know what they’re doing? They’re using search engine optimization to optimize for Google and for Bing. It depends on what platform the AI is using. 

So the way to optimize for AI at this time is to have your website optimized. And so they basically wrote this guy in, he ended up switching. He was paying, I think like five times more. So I called him a couple months later, and was like, how’s things going? He’s like, man, I haven’t seen any difference, literally any difference. So we’re here pretty soon, he’s gonna probably end up coming back. People don’t know they get caught up in these buzzwords and AI is real, don’t get me wrong. Like I said, I use it every day and you should be too.

I recommend, I tell people whatever I think. It’s like $20 or something what you pay. Maybe they raised it for the chat GBT, the plus version or whatever. I forget what they call it now. That’s money well spent. If you start using that, you’re not going to go back. It’s just nuts and you need to know how to use it. But don’t get so caught up in the buzzwords that just like this guy, he got so wrapped up and ⁓ I need to get optimized for AI that he didn’t even understand what that meant. He didn’t understand what they were going to do. And he ended up getting sold a bill of goods for no benefits.

John Pajak

Yeah, that’s why a lot of times I always recommend people go to you because you have the skill set, you’ve dedicated time and energy, and you have the experience to help people, especially with their websites and keeping everything optimized and making, turning that into a money-making tool that is your salesman for 24 seven. It’s kind of like, hey, have you heard about this? It’s amazing how many people, I shouldn’t say people because I don’t think they’re people. I think they’re bots, we get our spammer, spam emails. It’s just like they’re really fishing out there to keep on with the whole theme today. They don’t really care about you. They’re sending out thousands of these emails. It’s like if you really look at who they’re sending it to, it’s like a range. They literally are spamming. They’re just like, okay, well, if your web email address starts with this and ends with this, they’re sending it to you. They don’t really know who you are, they’re just out there blindly doing it. How could you trust somebody that does that?

Ezra McCarthy

You gotta think of it this way, at this point we spent 10 or well thousands hours just on lawn and landscape businesses websites. So that’s where it’s like, okay, can you do it yourself? Maybe, but some things aren’t worth it. Anyway, I need to digress, we’d probably better get going here.

John Pajak

Yeah. So Ezra, before you take off, thank you for your time. First of all, I appreciate you. If people want to reach out to you to learn more about what you do, where can they go?

Ezra McCarthy

The best place to find us is greenfrogwebdesign.com or if you’re bad with spelling, can just type in, ilovemyfrog.com. You can thank Seth Godin for that domain, but it’ll take you to the right place.

John Pajak

That’s awesome. As always, I’ll make sure that the link is in the show notes so it makes it easy for you. You could just click on the show notes that are below or above or next to wherever they are in the podcast directory and we have this on YouTube. It’ll also be in the description. So again, Ezra, I really do appreciate your time. Thank you for visiting with us today. Hope to have you on again soon. 

Ezra McCarthy

Sounds great. Thanks, John.

John Pajak

All right. For those of you listening, thank you very much. I hope this was helpful to you. If you want to reach out to Ezra, greenfrogwebdesign.com. That’ll be in the show notes. As always, God bless, keep pushing through, and we’ll catch you on the next one.